Leonard Shoen; Innovative Founder of U-Haul Firm

Leonard S. Shoen, the seminal founder of the do-it-yourself moving industry with his creation of U-Haul International Inc. in 1945, apparently has committed suicide. He was 83.

Shoen drove his car into a wooden utility pole in Las Vegas shortly before noon Wednesday. The Clark County, Nev., coroner’s office said Tuesday that the multimillionaire died of blunt force trauma and that his death was a suicide.

The innovative businessman had lived in Las Vegas since U-Haul was wrested from his control more than a decade ago in a scandalous family feud that included litigation, fistfights and even the slaying of a daughter-in-law.

Shoen suffered another business reversal of sorts last May when he withdrew his application for a gaming license from a reluctant Nevada Gaming Commission. He had sought the license for his World Trade Center hotel in Las Vegas that he bought in 1996.

Headquartered in Phoenix since 1967, U-Haul has about 14,000 independent dealers and 1,100 company-owned moving centers. Despite the family feud and a judgment in the founder’s favor that resulted in temporary bankruptcy, U-Haul remains the leading company in the truck and trailer rental industry, ahead of its major competitor, Miami-based Ryder System. U-Haul also is a major operator of storage facilities.

Born in McGrath, Minn., and educated at Oregon State University, Shoen was fresh out of World War II Navy service when he began building trailers on a ranch in Washington. Nicknamed “Slick” for his ability to wheel and deal, he already had tried medical school, operating motels and owning a string of barbershops.

Fueled by families’ need to move in the postwar era, especially to the West, Shoen within two years established a thriving network of U-Haul dealerships at service stations along the Pacific Coast. A fast-talking dynamo, he frequently took to the road himself to inspect and repair the orange trailers that originally rented for $2 a day.

By 1949, the trailers were available for one-way trips from most cities in the United States.

Known as tightfisted from the outset, Shoen provided a flamboyant object lesson to his executives in 1970 about spending money that accomplishes nothing but makes them feel better. He threw $1,000 in bills ranging from $1 to $100 onto a downtown Phoenix street--quickly snarling traffic as passersby stopped to scoop up the bills.

The Shoen family and company battle began in the mid-1980s over diversification. Concerned about the closing of the many service stations that handled their trailers, Shoen and his oldest son, Samuel, tried to move U-Haul into general rentals.

Under the umbrella Amerco Inc., they formed a furniture moving company and A-Z Rentals offering everything from videocassettes to mailboxes to motor homes and Jet Skis. The experiment was a financial disaster, and the highly profitable company started losing money.

Two of Shoen’s younger sons, Joseph and Mark, wanted U-Haul to focus on its core do-it-yourself moving business. So they sued in 1986, forcing their father into early retirement.

Calling themselves “the outsiders,” Shoen and other family members subsequently won a $1.5-billion jury award that a judge reduced to $461 million. The company sought bankruptcy protection from the debt, but eventually paid up and weathered the business squall.

Shoen regularly watched his sons slug one another at stockholders’ meetings. Shoen’s lawyer claimed that opponents set fire to his house because he represented the founder.

Then in 1990, Samuel Shoen’s wife, Eva Berg Shoen, was found shot to death in her Telluride, Colo., home. Shoen said that the gunshot was meant for his son Samuel and that the slaying was related to the family feud--prompting a libel suit from the sons controlling the company. In 1994, a transient pleaded guilty to killing Eva Shoen accidentally during a burglary.

Before the family feud, Shoen painted his company and his family as well-organized and happy, although he mostly was an absentee father, flying his Cessna around the country on business. He published his upbeat memoirs, “You and Me,” in 1980.

Shoen married five times and had 13 children.